A fair question to ask. But, whatever the solution is, "firing all of the new blood" seems pretty much the opposite of whatever the solution might be.

Is that what's happening?

Edit: I didn't see the bit about probation. I think that's probably because you have to start with people on probation if you're making people redundant, right?

No, they're doing it to probationary employees because they're aren't protected by the same laws that require cause for firing.

Political appointees require 30 days notice, rank-and-file must be given cause.

Yeah. They have less protection, less political power to resist. They also presumably generally aren't running important things and filled with tribal knowledge so at least in the short term they are more disposable (if you don't care about the future)

I don't mean that - I mean it's unlikely you can have people on probation stay on while making other people redundant, just from the perspective of regulations or union rules around redundancy.

Overall, NASA doesn't strike me as a place full of people leeching off government salaries with no benefit. They create valuable stuff. But the article mentions things like committing to suboptimal projects just so some senior workers can keep doing the same job... That sounds pretty bad. Space agencies shouldn't be jobs programs.

Everyone thinks that about agencies like NNSA and NASA, but then once you get under the covers it's a government agency like every other one. There are clerks and contract analysts and HR drones and people who push paper to other people who push paper in a self-perpetuating bureaucratic machine.

Same thing with the Intelligence Community: lots of DMV-like cogs that have TS clearances but otherwise are little different than the masses occupying the Social Security office down the street.

Then you fire those "HR drones" along with the ostensibly "useful" people and suddenly you can't reach the "useful" people to rehire them because you fired HR.